Two Sitting Judges Resign Ahead of Personnel Changes... Possible Run for General Election

As the deadline for public officials to resign in order to run in the 22nd National Assembly election (the 11th) approaches, current prosecutors and judges are submitting their resignations. Their candidacies are being speculated.

According to the legal community on the 10th, the Supreme Court recently accepted the resignation of Jeon Sang-beom (Judicial Research and Training Institute class 34), Chief Judge of the Uijeongbu District Court, and decided to process his resignation on the same day. It is known that Chief Judge Jeon is preparing to run for the general election as a member of the People Power Party.

Shim Jae-hyun (class 30), Chief Judge of the Mokpo Branch of the Gwangju District Court, also recently submitted his resignation and will retire as of the 11th of this month. It is expected that Chief Judge Shim will run in the Gwangju area as a member of the Democratic Party.

According to the Public Official Election Act, public officials who intend to run in the general election must resign at least 90 days before the election. The resignation deadline for running in the 22nd general election scheduled for April this year is the 11th.

This is not the first time a sitting judge has directly entered politics. In the 21st general election held in 2020, judges-turned-politicians such as Lee Su-jin and Choi Ki-sang from the Democratic Party, and Jang Dong-hyuk from the People Power Party resigned to run for office.

There is criticism in the legal community that it is inappropriate for judges and prosecutors who were recently involved in trials or investigations to directly run for the general election. However, there is no legal way to prevent this, so currently there are no obstacles to their candidacy.

Previously, current prosecutors such as Lee Sung-yoon, a research fellow at the Legal Research and Training Institute, Kim Sang-min, a prosecutor at the Daejeon High Prosecutors' Office, and Shin Sung-sik, also a research fellow at the Legal Research and Training Institute, have expressed their intention to run and submitted their resignations one after another. They are currently under investigation or trial by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, so their resignation letters have not yet been accepted. However, the Public Official Election Act regards the 'time when the resignation letter is received' as the standard for candidacy, so there is expected to be no problem with their running for office.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.